As businesses increase their online presence in order to reach their target audience, an increasingly popular strategy to implement it is that of local search engine marketing. Traditional search engine marketing or SEM as it is commonly referred to, can provide benefit to both large and small-scale businesses. Local search engine marketing takes it a step further by focusing on a specific geographic location. The main idea of this type of campaign is to enhance the visibility of the associated website within search engines on the local level. There are a number of considerations related to beginning a local search engine marketing campaign. Typically, marketers must take into account their budget, specific goals and milestones related to the campaign. Most importantly, they must understand the time commitment required. Often, businesses will outsource this task to marketing specialists, ie: ME, who am able to craft a customized campaign to reach their objectives then implement that plan.

There are a few methods to achieve a comprehensive local search engine marketing campaign. Success is dependent upon the unique circumstances of the business and a multitude of other factors that play into the quality of the campaign. One of the core components in any local advertising push is to increase visibility in major search engines (THINK Google, Bing and Yahoo). This can be accomplished by utilizing search engine optimization techniques or SEO as it is more commonly referred. Through the use of SEO, the business entity can increase its prominence and its page rank on the respective search engines. Once the appropriate keywords are identified, they can then craft the SEO campaign to rank for these terms. Say for example you are running a campaign for a specific location in Baltimore. You would want your website to come up first when a user searches for your specific services in Baltimore. Search engine optimization is an essential tool in any local search engine marketing campaign, as the visibility of the site in organic search results will help to markedly increase traffic. Keyword research is ever so important to ensure the website is represented effectively and properly configured for crawling.

Local search engine marketing is seeing increased utilization by companies with traditional brick-and-mortar locations. Also as SEO techniques evolve, it is imperative that campaigns use the most appropriate tactics to adequately market local companies confined to a geographic area. This means that businesses must leverage keywords, marketing tactics and creative descriptions in order to promote the business and increase customer foot traffic. Google for example has a number of tools available to businesses looking to boost their local footprint. Google Maps and Google Places are two fantastic examples. A company can incorporate these items into their SEO campaigns and use them as a tool to increase visibility on mobile devices as well as traditional web search. This not only broadens the company’s reach, but it allows users searching these terms to easily identify the company, as they will be listed when a user searches for the respective company. This helps the website to be found faster and generate walk-ins. With local search engine marketing there is no doubt that it requires a time investment and constant tweaking to establish the best approach for a business. With proper SEO techniques and a consistent strategy, businesses have the potential to reap many rewards from their campaigns.

Are you using a local search engine marketing plan to grow your business and increase revenues? Why or why not?

About Alan Moore: Alan is an Internet Marketing Consultant with ReachLocal Baltimore. His mission is to help you increase your revenues and decrease unproductive advertising expenses through proven, online marketing strategies. He manages over $1,800,000 in yearly marketing budgets and has worked with local businesses, agencies and the US government. Give him a call at (877)655-3438 to schedule a Free Online Marketing Consultation.